How hard am I working? Am I pushing myself and getting the maximum from my training
efforts? These are common questions for those of us focused on a high quality workout.
Although Heart Rate Monitors are touted as THE only way to know the exact intensity level
of your cardiovascular workout, there is a cheaper, easier (and perhaps better) alternative
- the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE or PE) scale {below} proposed by G. A. Borg in 1982 (Med Sci in
Sports Exer. 14(5):377-81, 1982).

Perceived exertion was the approach used by Lance Armstrong in his 55-km (34-mile) time
trial victory in his 6th Tour de France. The following is from an interview with Phil Liggett
and Paul Sherwen. "I didn't have a speedometer. I said I'm not looking at speed, I'm not
looking at cadence. I'm just going to ride like I feel."

It worked. He won the stage convincingly, taking 61 seconds out of time-trial rival Jan
Ullrich. "Going naked" in a TT seems an unusual strategy for Armstrong who, prompted by
coach Chris Carmichael, is an extremely scientific cyclist. Lance uses a watts meter on
most rides and sends Chris the files to download and analyze for planning subsequent
workouts. Lance could have ridden the TT with a watts meter to monitor intensity and avoid
crossing his red line. Yet the only feedback he used was what his body was telling
him. Like many experienced riders against the clock, he has a keen sense of
pace. He has
learned to tread the border between going at a semi-comfortable pace (thus losing time)
and going too hard early (thus slowing dramatically in the final kilometers).

And here's another I found in www.roadbiker.com. "In a recent interview with VeloNews,
2004 Paris-Roubaix winner Magnus Backstedt commented on how his training changed after
several years of poor results. "I got back to what I did when I started racing",
said the 30-year-old Swede. "[I had been] doing all kinds of controlled training,
hitting thresholds, intervals, all that. Instead, I went back to what my body told me. I
took every single piece of equipment off my bike. At the end of the day, despite what
technology tells you, if it's not right, it's not right. It's been fine ever since."

Backstedt's comments have provoked lively exchanges on internet discussion groups devoted
to training. Some applaud his return to more "natural" workouts. Others deplore his
flight from analysis and scientific training with watts meters and heart monitors. Which
approach works best? We like the way Allen Lim, Ph.D., coaches his riders. In his
ground-breaking doctoral work at the University of Colorado, Lim analyzed data from power
meters used by pro riders in races and training. You'd think Lim would advocate scientific
training. He does, but recommends a middle ground: training by feel and then analyzing
the results by scientific means.

Structured training plans are important to help you meet your cycling goals. But as Lim
and Backstedt point out, you need to be flexible. If your training plan calls for hard
intervals, climbing or long distance on a certain day and your body isn't cooperating,
it's crucial to recognize that you're not ready for more work. Then apply a combination of less
strenuous workouts and more rest instead of blindly
soldiering on and digging yourself into an even deeper hole.

The key to improving is using a combination of perceived exertion and interval training.
For longer than 30 seconds, your maximum sustainable pace will be your
lactate threshold (LT) which is approximately
90% of your maximum heart rate. You could use a HRM to pinpoint the highest heart rate
you can maintain for 30-60 minutes. But you can also ride without a heart monitor
(or power meter) and listen to you body, constantly monitoring your sense of
perceived exertion. To take this approach, learn to pay attention to your lungs and legs.

Your lungs. When your breathing is steady and regular, it means you're at or below
your LT. Start to pant, and you've gone over your limit and should back off a bit to
be at your LT again.

Your legs. If your quads are just uncomfortable, you are fine. If they start to
burn, back off.

USING NUMBERS (HR, WATTS) VS PERCEIVED EXERTION

Do all those gadgets (HR monitor, power meter) and laboratory tests (lactate levels) give
you a training edge compared to the use of perceived exertion? It's not clear - and when
you look at their costs and the distraction of using them, as well as the potential to
injure yourself if you are mindlessly training to the numbers, they may actually keep
you from maximum improvement. We know that improvement requires stressing the
muscles to the point that actual structural injury occurs.
Repair of the injury includes adaptation which leads to better performance. This is
the logic (and science) behind interval training.

Individual monitors don't provide
one critical bit of information – are we pushing at our
personal physiologic peak – adding that critical extra amount of training stress? Or
are we merely chasing a number.

A comment from my page on pacing is as relevant to
training to your max using a HR monitor or power meter linked to an interval strategy
as it is to overall race performance: "The influence of clock watching (sic - you c
an insert HR or watts here) on endurance performance is two-sided. The same time goal
that enhances performance when it is perceived as a target constrains performance
when it is perceived as a limit. The potential for time standards to become performance
limiters is most apparent at the elite level of endurance sports."

How do you identify the level of activity that stresses your muscles and CV system to
maximize improvement? It needs to be based on how you feel, not a HR or watt meter number.
And that feeling of maximum tolerable level exertion is your perceived level of
exertion. I know we all have had that day when our heart rate and level of performance
seem to be out of sync – a "bad day". On those days we should listen to our body,
not to our gadget. Chasing a number risks injury. Likewise on a good day, we may
reach our HR goal yet feel we still have more we could do. On these days we
should again use perceived exertion rather than a HR number for that day's interval goal.

Perceived exertion is our conscious awareness of the central governor,
the integration of multiple physiologic inputs which help to protect us from injury by
setting an upper limit on our level of exertion. That tight rope of enough
exertion to provide maximal stress without too much which increases the odds of injury.
And your central governor is the most sensitive measure integrating all the internal
measures that are your body's monitors (your dash board) of how the "engine" is functioning.
It is multiple inputs which include
such things as "..lactate levels, VO2max, heart rate,
heart-rate variability, rapid morning heart rate, recovery heart rate, hormone
levels (cortisol, testosterone, etc.), red cell counts (hemoglobin, hematocrit,
red cell indices), immunity (white blood cells, interleukins, inflammation),
muscle damage (creatine kinase, oxidative stress), blood pressure, and much more."

As Dr. Mirkin put it: "....these devices cannot tell you whether you are exercising
intensely enough to gain your maximum improvement in ability to take in and use oxygen
or to damage your muscles enough for maximum strength gain. Only your brain can tell
you whether you are at your maximum, if you need to take off because you are about
to injure yourself, or when you need to slow down because you are exhausted.
Fitness gadgets can help to motivate you and can be fun to use, but do not
count on them to tell you how intensely you should exercise or when you are at
the edge of an injury."

I could not find the original article he referenced but I'll
quote:
"..report from Deakin University in Australia reviewed 56 studies that compared
the way that electronic devices and your brain tell you when to slow down or
stop exercising (Br J Sports Med, September 29, 2015). Half of these studies
showed that the brain and sophisticated machines were equally effective in
telling you that you are training too intensely and need to reduce your training.
The other half of the studies showed that 85 percent of the time, the brain was
a better gauge of over-training than sophisticated machines."

My bottom line? Although monitors are a great tool, and do help keep us
engaged with our training program, if I had to pick, my preferred approach
would be based on a program of structured stress (intervals) using perceived
exertion as my measure of maximal stress rather than a single number
such as heart rate or power output.

USING THE RPE SCALE

The RPE scale ranges from 6 to 20*, and includes a literal
description for each level of exercise intensity. It was designed so adding a 0 to the
level of exertion would give a rough estimate of your heart rate i.e. if you were
resting (a 6 on the scale) your heart rate would be in the neighborhood of 60.
Although RPE isn't accurate enough for detailed physiologic studies, research has
demonstrated an amazingly high correlation for any individual from day to day.
In other words if you felt you were exercising at a 13 (somewhat hard) on two different
days, and checked your heart rate, it would be quite similar.

How can you use the RPE scale? First familiarize yourself with
the levels. Then, using a treadmill or wind trainer, rate your own level of exertion
BEFORE you check your pulse rate. With a little practice you will find that you
will be amazingly accurate in predicting your heart rate. At that point you can
use your own RPE instead of a heart rate monitor to monitor the intensity of the days
workout.

In addition,

Learn during interval training. Use a heart monitor that calculates average HR.
See how much intensity you can maintain for various durations. Focus on how these effort
levels feel. Then compare your perceived exertion to your average HR.

Learn on group rides. Note how the adrenaline from towing a group makes you
sometimes exceed a pace you can sustain.

Learn in time trials. Notice how you almost always go faster in the first
third of the race than you can sustain in the final third. Find your own "sweet spot"
of effort that's sustainable for about an hour.

RPE can change as fitness improves and with factors such as hydration, carbohydrate status,
and ambient temperature. So recalibrate your own RPE scale regularly during the season if you are
using this tool in your training. A heart rate monitor or a watts meter are important tools.
But when it matters most, your carefully honed self-perceived exertion level is
still the best monitor ever created.

QUESTIONS

Question: I want to improve my power at
lactate threshold (LT) so I can excel in
time trials and on long climbs. But I don't know how hard to ride during LT training.
Lab tests are expensive, I'm told that heart rate is unreliable and I don't have a watts
meter. Is there a simple method for nailing LT intensity without all the black magic?

Answer: PE can be used in 2 ways.
First is with intervals. Here you want to be a 10 for 30 to 40 seconds. That will maximize
your effort and provide the interval training benefits.